Pakistan is once again reaping the bitter harvest of its long-cultivated policy of nurturing jihadist groups, says Ramanathan Kumar, former Special Secretary of the Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW). Speaking on the spiralling violence in Pakistan’s border regions, Kumar described the situation between Afghanistan and Pakistan as “a sea change” from the triumphal mood of 2021, when the ISI chief had publicly celebrated the Taliban’s return to power in Kabul.

“Everything is far from all right now,” he observed, invoking the paradoxical logic of strategy outlined by Edward Luttwak — that a nation’s most effective weapon can eventually become its weakest. “Pakistan’s weapon of proxy warfare has come back to bite it with a vengeance,” he said, pointing to the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP)’s

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